


A Small Crime

by ThatRavenclawBitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatRavenclawBitch/pseuds/ThatRavenclawBitch
Summary: Rumplestiltskin Gold is on the run from aurors for the high crime of murdering a muggle when he stumbles into a book shop he's never seen before, yet feels achingly familiar.Belle French has lived a disappointingly ordinary life despite glimpses of things she doesn't understand. But when a man with a magic wand barges into her shop and takes her on the run with him, suspicions she's held her whole life are proved dangerously real.Full disclosure, I have no idea where this is going.





	A Small Crime

It was raining. 

Not that it wasn’t always raining at this time of year. There was a reason England was so green and verdant after all. But London wasn’t green. It was gray and dark and the clouds seemed to bear down on him as aggressively as the aurors who’d been tracking him. 

For once he was glad of the rain. The clogged street before him was filled with umbrellas and hoods, jackets with the collars turned up. With his dark overcoat and his head down, he blended in to the mass of bodies. As long as he didn’t draw attention to himself, he just might make it out of this alive. 

As a rule, Gold didn’t like crowds any more than he liked rain. But the crowd was exactly the reason he’d come to London. It was easy to fade into obscurity here. The countryside was dotted here and there with wizards and witches, but London was packed to bursting with them. A little magic was more easily masked here. 

He held his wand tightly in his coat pocket, ready to draw at any moment. He’d never been much of a dueler, but he’d held his own thus far. He could do it again if need be.

He had to. 

Head down, staring at his feet, he continued down the street. He’d almost reached his destination when he jostled against someone, just a bump of shoulders. 

“Pardon,” he said by force of habit, before glancing up into the blue eyes of David Nolan, the very auror who’d been hounding his every step for a full week. 

“Shit,” he muttered. 

“Go–” Nolan didn’t get his full name out before he’d been blasted down the street by a well placed ‘stupefy’. Several of the muggles surrounding them turned to stare at Gold, his wand drawn and held aloft in front of him. He pocketed it quickly before darting off down the street in the opposite direction from whence Nolan had come. 

Now he’d have the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement _and_ the Muggle Worthy Excuses Committee on his back. 

“Gold!” he heard a woman yell behind him. “Stop!” 

He looked over his shoulder to see Nolan’s partner, Emma Swan running full force behind him. There was nothing for it now, no matter that he’d probably splinch himself. He closed his eyes and disapparated for parts unknown.

When the suffocating feeling of apparation abated, Gold cracked an eye open, surprised to find that he seemed to still be in one piece. He appeared to be in a muggle shop, a book shop, if the row of tomes pressing in to his lower back were anything to go by. There were rickety old shelves filled to bursting with leather bound books. It smelled like dust and paper and furniture polish. It felt familiar, no matter that he had no immediate memory of the place. He must have been thinking of it for his magic to bring him here though. 

“Oh!” came a startled voice to his side and he pushed away from the bookshelf he’d stumbled into upon apparition. “I didn’t realize we had any customers.” 

There was a tiny muggle at the end of the aisle, her long dark hair pulled back from her face and wearing the highest heels he’d ever seen. 

“Can I help you find something?” the woman asked, walking down the aisle toward him with ease, despite her footwear. 

“Where am I?” he blurted out. 

The woman raised an eyebrow, taking in his haggard appearance, but made no other indication that his question was odd. 

“Hoffman’s Rare Books and Antiques,” she said before motioning to a silver plated sign behind him. “I’m Belle. Can I help you with anything else?” 

Gold shook his head, his hair sticking to his forehead from the rain. He realized he was dripping water across the wood flooring, a puddle forming around his feet. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, moving past her down the aisle to the front of the shop. “I was just leaving.” 

He wasn’t entirely sure where he was but he hoped it was far enough from Emma Swan to give him a reasonable head start. 

“Wait,” Belle said, a hand brushing against his arm. He froze at the touch, the first time someone had touched him in so very long. “Are you sure you’re alright? It’s raining cats and dogs out there and you’re already soaked through.” 

There was so much concern in her blue eyes, concern for someone she’d never even met. He’d been like that once. Caring. Empathetic. Those days were gone.

“I have somewhere to be,” he said gruffly, shaking her hand off his arm. 

He reached the glass front door, his hand on the handle to pull it open, when he saw them across the street. Three aurors all in their department issued dark robes. He had a split second’s notice before the glass of the door busted inward in a shower of broken shards. Gold dove out of the way, knocking into Belle and taking her to the ground with him. 

“What happened!” she exclaimed. But Gold was already getting to his feet, grabbing her hand to help her up. 

“Is there anywhere in this shop to hide?” he demanded. “A panic room or something?” 

Belle’s exquisite eyes widened. “What?” she cried. “Why? Who are you?” 

A spell whizzed by her head, striking the books behind her and sending them flying in the air. Gold ducked her head, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the back of the shop. He wasn’t sure a muggle hostage would do him much good at this point. The aurors didn’t seem to care who they hit with their spells in their pursuit of him. They’d curse a muggle and clean up the damage later. Still, she might be useful. 

“Nevermind,” he said, forgetting the hiding option altogether. Running. That was ever his only option. And now this poor young woman would be dragged along with him. 

Spells were flying through the air, lighting up the shop with bolts of blue and red and white light. Gold ducked a stupefy, turning to throw bombarda over his shoulder. An entire row of bookshelves exploded, masking their exit out the back of the store in a shower of splintered wood and paper. 

“My books!” Belle cried as she was dragged along behind him, slapping his shoulder ineffectually. “What did you do to my books? And what is that in your hand?” 

“No time to explain,” he shouted, racing through the back alley and out to the street. It was still pouring rain but Gold realized where they were at once. It wasn’t far. 

“Come with me,” he demanded, pulling Belle’s hand that she’d begun to try to wrench from his grip. 

“Not until you tell me who the hell you are!” 

“Rumplestiltskin Gold,” he said with a flourish, an old habit that he hadn’t quite been able to quell in his new life as a renegade. “And this,” he said, flexing his wand in his hand, “is my magic wand. Any more questions?” 

The woman’s eyes widened even further. 

“I knew it,” she gasped breathlessly, her grip tightening in his own. “Okay, lets go.” 

Gold quirked his brow at the strange woman. He’d have thought his explanation would have confused her further. Instead she seemed entirely convinced. 

“Okay,” he agreed. They turned down the next block, arriving at a moldy old building Gold had hoped never to see again. 

“Here,” he said, pulling Belle with him under the awning of the building. He pulled his wand out, doing a complicated bit of spellwork before the door opened, the musty scent of decay greeting them from within. They entered and the door slammed shut behind them, a series of elaborate locks clicking in to place. 

He finally dropped Belle’s hand, his fingers cramping from how tightly he’d been holding it. 

“Where are we?” she asked, looking around the dim foyer of the building. It was an old apartment block, completely abandoned but the safest place for them at the moment. There was a row of tarnished brass front mailboxes set in to one wall, the other wall taken up by a rickety staircase covered in threadbare carpet. 

“Someplace safe,” he said with a sigh, shuffling further in to the building and shaking water off his overcoat. 

“Why were those people after you?” Belle asked. She had leaned back against the closed door, one of her heeled shoes in one hand as she massaged her foot with the other.

“Because he up and killed a muggle,” came a voice from the top of the stairs. Belle gasped, and Gold instinctively stepped in front of her to shield her. A man was descending the stairs, older than the last time Gold had seen him. His gray hair was thinning, his cardigan stretched tight across his expanding waistline. His eyes were the same though. Blue and hard, like ice. 

“Killed a muggle,” the man said again as he reached the foot of the stairs. “Didn’t you my boy? It’s all over the papers.”

Gold’s teeth ground together at the endearment, but he didn’t deny it. 

“Is that like one of those fancy dog hybrids?” Belle asked from behind him and the man let out a hearty laugh, his focus swinging to her. 

“And now you’ve kidnapped one as well!” he exclaimed like it was some grand joke. “Pretty one. Perhaps we’re more alike than you care to admit.” 

“I’m nothing like you,” Gold snarled, rage bubbling up inside him. Perhaps he’d have been better off with the aurors. 

“Oh come now, my boy,” the man said, reaching up to clap Gold on the shoulder. “For the first time ever I’m quite proud to be your dad.” 

Belle let out a little sound of comprehension, and Gold shut his eyes. This was the last place in the world he ever wanted to be. 

“Can I stay here for the night?” he asked, forcing the words out against his very nature. “Just to regroup. I’ll be gone first thing in the morning.” 

Malcolm Gold’s eyes widened, slapping his hand against his son’s shoulder once more. 

“Of course!” he cried, jovially. “Nothing would make me happier.”

He glanced around Gold at Belle, giving her a once over. “Nothing would make me happier indeed.” 

Gold’s lip curled. He wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, that was for certain.


End file.
